It is a version of the great Irish absurdist theatre classic Waiting for Godot - but with guns.

Dubbed "Waiting for Gerry", it is a guessing game of whether and when the IRA will wind itself up as an armed force. The suspense could end as early as tomorrow if, as speculation suggests, the IRA issues a historic statement on its future. But as with Samuel Beckett's play, nothing is certain.

Speculation has been ebbing and flowing since April, when the Sinn Féin leader, Gerry Adams, made a groundbreaking speech challenging the IRA to abandon its armed struggle and embrace politics, discarding the old strategy of the Armalite in one hand and the ballot box in the other.

Sceptics noted that the speech came while Sinn Féin was being vilified across the world for IRA members' alleged involvement in the murder of Robert McCartney, an innocent Catholic.

Mr Adams issued his appeal hours after the McCartney sisters received a standing ovation in the European parliament. It also came on the second day of the Westminster election campaign, and so was dismissed by unionists as a "stunt".

But Sinn Féin says the IRA has spent months in an intense internal debate over abandoning guns for pure politics. It is thought that the organisation could issue a statement this week saying members are to end "active service" and transform themselves into an old boys' network of republican clubs.

But timing is everything and many remain cautious. The republican machine prides itself on news management. It would not want to make its historic announcement when it was not guaranteed to top the news agenda. Having often bombed London, the IRA does not now want to be associated with Islamist suicide bombers or risk seeing its groundbreaking announcement relegated to a paragraph on the wider terrorist threat.

Tony Blair is desperate for some good news to show he is not fighting domestic terrorism on two fronts. But republicans have never played to Downing Street timetables.

However, in the past few days, Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Martin Ferris, who represents Kerry North in the Irish parliament, are said to have stood down from the IRA's ruling army council, a body they continue to deny ever being part of.

Some interpret this as paving the way for the IRA's "new mode". Veteran republican-watchers say that no matter what the men's official roles, they still call the shots.

The IRA is finalising the wording of its statement, and Mr Adams cautioned this week that it needs "space". Post-ceasefire Northern Ireland has seen a decade of constructive ambiguity.

This has allowed the IRA to continue multimillion-pound robberies, crime and the intimidation of its own communities through punishment beatings and exilings while Sinn Féin sat at the political negotiating table.

The British and Irish governments now want a definitive end to all IRA activity, expressed in a statement that does not require a degree in code-breaking to decipher.

Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness were in talks at Downing Street this week, and General John de Chastelain, the disarmament chief who would oversee any decommissioning that followed an IRA statement, is on standby in Dublin.

Last night Sinn Féin announced that Mr McGuinness and party colleague Rita O'Hare would head to the US today, heightening speculation that an announcement is imminent. A party spokesman said: "The purpose of the visit is to brief political opinion and Irish America on the political situation."

Downing Street sees an IRA statement as a sign that paramilitarism can be carefully removed from Northern Ireland's working-class communities, where it rules most people's lives. But this week the warping role of violence was clearer than ever. In the early hours of yesterday, a Catholic church and a pub were attacked in Ballymena.

Meanwhile, the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force is making a mockery of its ceasefire, as a bloody feud with a splinter group, the Loyalist Volunteer Force, appears to be spiralling out of control.

Two men have been killed in recent weeks. Over the past two days 100 or so UVF men forced out six families with links to the LVF from an estate in east Belfast. Loyalist paramilitaries then occupied the streets as police stood by.

David Ervine, head of the Progressive Unionist party, which is linked to the UVF, yesterday said that an IRA statement which showed "the start of an ideological shift" would be "very significant".

But it remains to be seen whether loyalist paramilitaries will follow suit.

The two governments hope an IRA statement will rescue the peace process and realise the once unthinkable - the Democratic Unionist leader, Ian Paisley, sharing power with Sinn Féin at Stormont.

But another waiting game could begin. The DUP's chairman said this weekend that it could be years before the party was ready to enter government with Sinn Féin.